DIY arcade game from a Mac G4
By Barb Dybwad 
posted March 15th 2005 8:38PM
posted March 15th 2005 8:38PM
People find many creative ways of repurposing their old machines, though few are quite as creative as creativebastard, who spent a full year converting his old dual 500MHz Mac G4 into a classic arcade-style gamebox. Can't beat that canary yellow, nohow.
[Via TUAW]
A friend of mine just got done building an arcade cabinet like that. He used his old 486 and has an old tv in the cabinet. He even has it hooked up on his network so he can run his custom jukebox program. I think he spent 300 dollars to get it completely functional, and half of that was on the joysticks.
What games is he actually gonna be able to play in that? Can you get MAME or similar for Mac?
Jez is awesome.
I replaced my old NES with my current G5. Since my Mac and TV are close to each other, I used the DVI out and optical audio out, plugged it into the proper places on TV/surround sound system and bought an NES gamepad that was reconfigured with a USB cable and works in Mac OS X.
Now I have close to 1,000 NES games that i can play on my home TV through my Mac. With the Apple wireless keyboard/mouse, I can even control it without getting up.
Fishes,
narco.
Yes, Tom, MAME is available for Macs too.
Now that's just.... sweet!!!!!
Can you guys make a tutorial about obtaining roms and what programs to use to manage thousands of games? I've been wanting to do this project for a long time and I think I will start very soon.
no, we don't want to go to jail
Shawn, go hang out at arcadecontrols.com for help on front ends or building a cabinet. MAME with Mamewah would work for managing your ROMS.
As for obtaining ROMS, geez, you really are new to this whole scene, aren't you? They're not legal, you know, unless you own the original machine. That said, no one really cares any more about old arcade games, and ROMS are pretty easy to download. Or you can send away for the entire collection on DVD.
lol @ shawn. if you don't know how to d/l roms, then you don't need/deserve to build an arcade.
I can't help but feel a little bit jilted with this posting. Hundreds (probably thousands) of people have built arcade cabinets for emulation, console, or computer games.. But I guess if you use a mac and spend a year doing it, bonus points to you, and a free link on Engadget.
Two friends and I built three cabinets in about 3 1/2 weeks. In the dead of winter. In an uninsulated steel building. At night. And they are IMO better than this one (Though his photographs are nicer, and I do not intend to discredit this fellow's work at all. His cab looks awesome, and it's very unique.)
http://www.blurbco.com/~gork/mamecab/
http://www.blurbco.com/~kevin/mame/
#2:
http://emulation.net is dedicated to mac emulation, and has been since 97.
it's a nice clean site and it will show ya the range of emulation opportunities and applications for mac.
ps you must be pretty naive about macs to ask that ;)
Nice cab design, John.
I have to admit, though, this guy's take on the MAME cab is quite nice. I was never really fond of the black industrial look. Looked too much like it belonged in a smoky bowling alley with bubble gum on the floor.
A GREAT place to get ROMS from would be http://www.starroms.com/ to start. Do things legally people. :)
#10, I agree. What's the big deal with this one?
its nice that you can do emulation of old machines on a mac. If only you could run most current hardware and software on it, than we might have something.
there is something sad about a g4 relegated to a life of z80 emulation.....
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